Open Letter: Mr. Kapil Sharma, are you Homophobic?

June 3, 2015 /
Pahichan Reporter

Pahichan/June 3- Sunil Pant a Former Member of parliament of Nepal had written a letter to Kapil Sharma. Read the letter here:

Dear Kapil Sharma

I have watched your comedy shows, enjoyed them and used to admire you allot until recently. One may say this is a bit late to raise any issue about the show that was aired a while ago but since I only recently watched your last year’s show on youtube, I am very disappointed and felt important to write to you about the fact that you are hugely misinformed about sexual ordinations and gender identities, and misleading the public globally as millions of people watch your comedy shows globally. In this episode which is in a Hindi language, you playing a role of ‘a travel agent’ who organizes honeymoon packages, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sy5OwZdS3q0 , at 2:10 of this youtube video, you said that ‘lesbian’ couple needed to be sent to a ‘clinic’, not to the honeymoon. For your information, modern medical science has proved that homosexuality is not a disease and even World Health Organization has declared in 1990 that homosexuality is not a disease or any kind of disorder (http://www.who.int/gender-equity-rights/knowledge/strasbourg-sexual-orientation.pdf).

We understand that your show-format is comedy but telling that “lesbians” should be sent to ‘clinic’ is not funny at all; this only misleads public more and creates more fear and low-self esteem among the lesbian, gays, bisexual and transgender communities who are already marginalized and oppressed in India. And this is also completely against the purpose of your show, which is to make people happy and laugh but not ‘laugh at somebody-else’ by causing more pain.

Contrary to our expectations(we expect celebratory like you to help to promote acceptance of homosexuals and transgenders in the society), it’s very disheartening to see this kind of degrading-expression against homosexuals and transgenders by you, a hugely popular celebrity/comedian, not only for India but globally.

I would like to ask youtube to kindly remove this video from youtube and ask you, Mr. Kapil Sharma, to respect human diversities and promote acceptance, but not to condemn homosexuals and Transgenders through your popular comedy shows.

There is not a uniform understanding among ordinary people about homosexual, transgender, inter-sex and bi-sexual people. Even the people who know about variance in this community address saying female, male and transgender. They, however, do not have proper knowledge that transgender have two categories: transgender woman and transgender man.
In this situation, it is not an easy task to inform society about their rights. Even the media and society did not have a positive attitude towards sexual and gender minority such as homosexual, transgender, inter-sex and bi-sexual people. National media had... Read more